Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life; indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The novel was a succès de scandale, and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895. It has lost none of its power to fascinate and disturb.

A Tale of Two Cities is one of Charles Dickens's most exciting novels. Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, it tells the story of a family threatened by the terrible events of the past. Doctor Manette was wrongly imprisoned in the Bastille for 18 years without trial by the aristocratic authorities.

Widely regarded as the first English novel, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is one of the most popular and influential adventure stories of all time. This classic tale of shipwreck and survival on an uninhabited island was an instant success when first published in 1719, and it has inspired countless imitations.

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.... The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady's maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives - presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.

One of Jane Austen's most popular novels. Arrogant, self-willed, and egotistical, Emma is her most unusual heroine.

When Diana of the cursed house Bellatrix loses her life, she is forced to admit to the king of the underworld that she had not become the hero she promised him. He did not rage, nor smite her soul where she stood. The king’s only demand for resurrection was her attendance at Afterlife Academy, a rehabilitation center for failed heroes of history. A place where she can learn to control her destructive, bloodthirsty power. As she adapts to her new home, she unexpectedly encounters a godchild of Mars known as Calix.

A magical adventure of animals traveling worldwide to Noah's ark. Max, a Scottish terrier, takes his usual morning trot down to the loch where he hears a mysterious Voice humming in the reeds saying, "Come to me...follow the fire cloud." He embarks on an unknown journey from Scotland, meeting other animals along the way including Liz, a brilliant, petite black cat from France. Max and Liz become the brave leaders for their group, and eventually, for the entire ark. The mysterious journey, filled with danger, humor, trials, and triumphs, leads them across Europe to the Middle East.

The Archangel of Death is the master of taking human life. But keeping mortals alive? Not exactly Azrael's forte. For thousands of years, Azrael’s greatest enemy has been silent. Leaving him in relative peace for the first time since the great angel war. Now that silence has been broken, and the Morning Star has returned with a dangerous ultimatum: Azrael can join, or watch everything he loves be destroyed. Two lives hang in the balance - Azrael’s beloved human wife, Nadine, and their unborn, part-angel son...Warren.

CastleCorp and the famous Castleton brothers are unveiling the World’s Greatest Adventure Machine! The roller coaster is an experience like no other, and four lucky kids have won the chance to be the first to ride it. There’s Trevor, whose latest stunt got him in trouble at school...again. There’s Devin, whose father is pushing him to be the next Internet sensation. Nika’s wealthy grandfather isn’t too pleased about her participation. And Cameron, he’ll be the first to tell you, is a certified genius. The whole world is watching.

A foundling of mysterious parentage, Tom Jones is brought up by the benevolent and wealthy Squire Allworthy as his own son. Tom falls in love with the beautiful and unattainable Sophia Western, a neighbor’s daughter, whose marriage has already been arranged. When Tom’s sexual misadventures around the countryside get him banished, he sets out to make his fortune and find his true identity.

Mr. Chesney operates Pilgrim Parties, a tour group that takes paying participants into an outer realm where the inhabitants play frightening and foreboding roles. The time has come to end the staged madness...but can it really be stopped?

Discover Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie's classic fantasy novel. Set in an exotic eastern landscape peopled by magicians and fantastic talking animals, Salman Rushdie's classic children's novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories inhabits the same imaginative space as The Lord of the Rings, The Alchemist, and The Wizard of Oz.

The Paris Wife meets PBS’s Victoria in this enthralling novel of the life and loves of one of history’s most remarkable women: Winston Churchill’s scandalous American mother, Jennie Jerome.

Juliet is failing to juggle motherhood and her stalled-out dissertation on confessional poetry when her husband, Michael, informs her that he wants to leave his job and buy a sailboat. With their two kids - Sybil, age seven, and George, age two - Juliet and Michael set off for Panama, where their 44 foot sailboat awaits them. The initial result is transformative; the marriage is given a gust of energy, Juliet emerges from her depression, and the children quickly embrace the joys of being feral children at sea.

Riotous, sexy and groundbreaking, Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews: The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams, published in 1742, was one of the first English novels. Fielding was melding and parodying the two major forces battling for control of the fiction market at the time - the mock heroic, neoclassical tradition as practiced by Pope and Swift and the popular and populist fiction of the new novelists such as Defoe and Richardson.

This is the story of a young country workman obsessed by his ambition to become an Oxford student, interwoven with his fraught relationships with two women.

Constance Chatterley seeks to escape from the confines of a loveless marriage and the upper class surroundings that suffocate her. When she meets the gamekeeper of Chatterley mansion, Oliver Mellors, she is mesmerised and infatuated by his no-nonsense demeanour and passionate touch. The two soon forge a profound bond as a result of their sexual compatibility and sociopolitical views.

In true Dickensian fashion, The Old Curiosity Shop offers a humorous yet devastating depiction of both the most honourable and most corrupt members of 19th-century English society. Hailed by Queen Victoria as being ‘interesting and cleverly written', The Old Curiosity Shop introduces listeners to the uniquely colourful characters of Nell Trent, her young friend, Kit, her doting grandfather and the evil moneylender to whom they all fall prey, Daniel Quilp.

Kipling's masterpiece Kim is his final and most famous work and one of the first and greatest espionage stories ever written. It explores the life of Kimball O'Hara, an Irish orphan who spends his childhood as a vagrant in Lahore. When he befriends an aged Tibetan lama his life is transformed as he is requested to accompany him on a mysterious quest to find the legendary River of the Arrow and achieve Enlightenment.

The Prisoner of Zenda is the story of an Englishman who travels to the small European state of Ruritania where he impersonates the ruler and falls in love with Princess Flavia.

This audiobook is about the rise and fall of Michael Henchard. While out-of-work he gets drunk at a fair and impulsively sells his wife and baby for five guineas to a sailor. Eighteen years later he is reunited with his wife and daughter, who discover that he has gained wealth and respect and is now the most prominent man in Casterbridge. Though he attempts to make amends he is no less impulsive and once again loses everything due to bad luck and his violent, selfish and vengeful nature.

Set during the time of the Napoleonic Wars, this classic gives a satirical picture of a worldly society. The novel revolves around the exploits of the impoverished but beautiful and devious Becky Sharp who craves wealth and a position in society. Calculating and determined to succeed, she charms, deceives and manipulates everyone she meets. A novel of early 19th-century English society, it takes its title from the place designated as the centre of human corruption in John Bunyan's 17th-century allegory.

One of Dickens' early works, Nicholas Nickleby combines comedy and tragedy in a tale of triumph over adversity that is interspersed with Dickens' moving condemnation of society's mistreatment of children and the cruelty of the educational system. Young Nickleby struggles to seek his fortune in Victorian England, yet succeeds despite social injustice, in a story that mirrors Dickens' own rise from poverty to great success.

Catherine Morland reads tales of Gothic romance, yet leads a country life in Wiltshire. When she travels to Bath, she meets and falls in love with Henry Tilney. She is invited by his sister and father to stay at Northanger Abbey, where she meets all the trappings of Gothic horror that she has read about. Fortunately, she has her own good sense and irresistible but unsentimental hero, Henry Tilney.

Set in the Dorset landscape familiar to Hardy novels, The Woodlanders concerns the fortunes of Giles Winterborne, whose love for the well-do-do Grace Melbury is challenged by the arrival of a dashing and dissolute doctor, Edred Fitzpiers. When the mysterious Mrs Charmond further complicates the romantic entanglements, marital choice and class mobility become inextricably linked.

Sir Francis Bacon's The New Atlantis is a utopian novel about a mythical land called Bensalem, where the inhabitants live happily with the sciences. In The New Atlantis, Bacon focuses on the duty of the state toward science, and his projections for state-sponsored research anticipate many advances in medicine and surgery, meteorology, and machinery. Although The New Atlantis is only a part of his plan for an ideal commonwealth, this work does represent Bacon's ideological beliefs.

In this Audible Exclusive performance by Matt Lucas of Great Expectations, Charles Dickens demonstrates that conscience, loyalty and empathy are virtues far more valuable than intellect, wealth and social standing. First published in Dickens’ own periodical, All the Year Round, the novel was divided into nine monthly instalments, from December 1860 to August 1861. Unsurprisingly, it was an instant success and managed to sell over 100,000 copies per week. Though written at a challenging time in Dickens’ life, when the impending breakdown of his marriage loomed over him, Great Expectations proves to be one of his most optimistic, comical and romantic novels.

"The fortunes and misfortunes of the famous Moll Flanders, who was born in Newgate, and during a life of continue'd variety for three-score years, besides her childhood, was twelve year a whore, five times a wife (whereof once to her own brother), twelve year a thief, eight year a transported felon in Virginia at last grew rich, liv'd honest, and died a penitent."

Before marrying, Emma Bovary believed she would enter a life of luxury and passion like the sentimental stories she'd read in her novels and magazines. Now married to an ordinary country doctor her life is not the romantic ideal she imagined and seeks an escape through having extra-marital affairs. This devastating spiral into deceit and despair leads to catastrophic consequences. Emma Bovary continues to be enjoyed to this day because of its profound humanity, still as fresh today as when it was first written.

When John Durbeyfield discovers a family connection to the ancient Norman family, the D'Urbervilles, the fate of daughter Tess is transformed. Sent by her ambitious parents to visit her wealthy D'Urberville cousins, Tess attracts the attention of the unscrupulous Alec. Seduced and discarded by him and alone in the world, she finds work as a milkmaid and the love of Angel Clare. Yet his love cannot accept the truth about Tess's past.